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There are six words that, often without fail, can bring any lively dinner conversation among 20-somethings to a screeching halt: “Should we just split it evenly?”

The speaker, for the record, is never talking about the food.

Anyone who has ever purposely ordered the cheapest item on the menu – or, barring that experience, anyone who has ever seen the Friends episode “The One With Five Steaks And One Eggplant” – knows what happens next. The people who ordered the steak or extra glasses of wine happily agree to an even split; those who stuck to water and appetizers eye each other warily before someone quotes Phoebe Buffay: “Uh-uh. No way. Cold cucumber mush for thirty-something bucks?”

To be fair, your friends aren’t proposing an even split just to be sadistic. According to a 2004 academic study called “The Inefficiency of Splitting the Bill,” there is a price to pay for insisting that a bill be split based on what each dinner ordered, even for those who are saving money. “A part of it could be the mental cost of ﬁguring out one’s share of the bill, and calculating the portion of the tax and tip that apply to that share. Another part would be the social cost of appearing stingy or unfriendly,” the authors concluded. In other words: because math makes our brains hurt and because the Scrooge look is not a cute one, it can be better to make everyone pay the same thing even if they didn’t order the same thing.

So, what should you do? Is it better to split the bill evenly regardless of what you ordered, for the sake of ease and good social standing, or should you itemize so that the salad-eater isn’t subsidizing someone else’s lamb chops?

“It’s the eternal debate,” acknowledges David Weliver, founder of financial advice website Money Under 30, though he says that if there’s a clear difference in the price of your meal versus your friends’ meals, the choice between an even split or an itemized bill is a no-brainer. “If you didn’t order wine or you had a salad when everyone else got steaks, I think it’s always okay” to pay for what you got and only what you got, Weliver says.

Etiquette expert and Mannersmith president Jodi R.R. Smith agrees with Weliver, and says that contrary to what some might think, there is no set rule that all diners of all ages must obey – and while it may cut down on the math you have to do after a few glasses of wine, splitting a bill evenly amongst all diners isn’t a rule required by etiquette.

“I have a personal issue with rules – a rule implies that it has to happen all the time,” Smith says. She does, however, recommend carrying cash if you know you will order less than your friends and want to pay accordingly. “If you’re being cost conscious, make sure you have tens, twenties, fives and singles so that it makes it easier to split at the end.” This ensures that when you owe $26 for your cheaper meal, you won’t get stuck paying the $40 that everyone is forking over for their lamb chops simply because you don’t have a $5 or a $1.

Smith also recommends asking for separate checks at the start of the meal, as to ensure you only pay for what you order. When you ask at the end of the meal, after all the orders are in the system, a server might bristle. But if you ask at the beginning of the meal before the server has taken any orders, they are usually understanding, Smith says.

In recent years, the introduction of smart phone apps like Venmo and eBay’s PayPal have eased the how-do-we-pay-for-this dilemma that arises when you want to hold your friends accountable for those extra glasses of wine and split the bill down to the last penny. Venmo and PayPal let you send payments directly to your friends, through the app on your phone, which makes it easy to pay for exactly what you ordered, even if it’s an odd number (after factoring in tax and tip). For example, if you owe $37.50 of a $90 bill and your friend owes the rest ($52.50), splitting the bill $45/$45 might not seem fair. But you forgot to bring those handy $5’s and $1’s, and your waiter glared at you when you suggested putting $37.50 on one credit card and the rest on the other. If one friend is willing to put the whole $90 on his or her card (or pay entirely in cash), the other friend can “Venmo” or “PayPal” their portion of the bill.

The way it works is this: you link your Venmo or PayPal account to a debit or credit card of your choice. This allows you to send money using your friend’s email address or phone number, whether or not they have Venmo or PayPal account. (Venmo does have a feature that lets you send money to a person’s Twitter handle or Venmo user name if the recipient is a Venmo user.) They can leave the money in the account for future social use – like a “fun money” account separate from their regular checking – or, if they need the money, can “cash it out” by transferring to their bank account of choice.

Other apps, like Splitwise or Foodivide, can help with the math involved in splitting the bill but do not send the payments for you, which means you’ll still have to carry $5’s and $1’s if you want to pay a very precise total.

Carrying cash might sound like an old-fashioned solution, especially since credit cards may make it easy to itemize and tell a server, “put $27.54 on the blue one, $33.17 on the silver one and the rest on this orange one,” but anyone who dines out regularly knows restaurants and their servers aren’t always amenable to this option. Fekkak Mamdouh, a former headwaiter and union leader at World Trade Center restaurant Windows on the World, is the co-founder of advocacy group Restaurant Opportunities Centers United and said in a recent phone interview that the multiple-cards-with-different-sums scenario creates a bad sort of domino effect for the waiter: the longer it takes to run those cards – and it does take longer than say, processing five $20-bills – the longer it takes him to check on his other tables, which makes him inattentive and jeopardizes the tip he’ll get at the end of those meals.

This might explain why, if you’ve ever handed over eight different credit cards, you’ve gotten a frosty response from your server—and have possibly been led to believe that individual charges on individual credit cards to pay one large bill is not allowed. On the flip side, Mamdouh says, large groups who enforce an even split on diners who did not order as much as their comrades also create a tipping hazard for the wait staff.

“If someone doesn’t want to pay the same amount, but isn’t going to speak up, they’ll give less tip,” Mamdouh says. In other words, because a diner who ordered soup doesn’t want to subsidize their friend’s swordfish, they might “forget” to include tax and tip – but the person who suffers isn’t the friend who got a discounted meal, but the server who may depend on tips for a living.

So if you want to be a considerate diner, keep all of that in mind. But also know that these aren’t rules, pleasing others is what leads to subsidizing your friends’ drinks and dessert (when you really can’t afford it) which then leads to resentment, so don’t be afraid to stick up for yourself.

“I think it’s totally awkward, but there’s no way around it: you need to be confident in saying, ‘I’m on a budget, I’m trying to save money, I specifically ordered these things [to save money]. Can we take that into account?’” suggests Money Under 30’s Weliver. He adds that if you’re looking for a good barometer as to when to enforce individualized paying versus even splits, $5 can be a good line of demarcation.

“If you’re going to argue over $2, I might give in,” he says. “If you got something that’s significantly less expensive, stand up for yourself, at any age.”

Yes, at any age. This might sound like odd advice if you’re like Samantha Matt, founder of millennial-focused online magazine ForeverTwentySomethings, who has noticed her tab-paying habits change just in the few years since she was an undergrad. “In college, I don’t think there was ever a time you just split evenly. You get it right down to how many cents it was, and one person would take the check and tell you what you owe,” she recalled in a recent phone interview. “Now that people are making money, maybe they want to show off, or you don’t want to seem cheap, so everyone kind of splits.”

However, just because your friend group has trended away from itemization and towards even splits doesn’t mean you’re doomed to a lifetime of paying for your friend’s third drink while you’ve only had one.

“It does not go away, it’s always there,” says etiquette expert Smith. “But the thing that happens is you become more comfortable, you know who you are. When people are younger, what happens is they don’t want to bring up things like individualized bills. You don’t want any awkwardness at the end.” Her suggestion, if you know you’re on a tight budget, is to have a friend at the meal advocate for you. Having someone say, “hey, Jodi only got the soup, so let her pay her share and we’ll split the rest” is a great way to ensure fairness for all and smart spending for you, Smith says.

Caroline Potter, chief dining officer of online reservation system OpenTable, adds that because alcohol can be one of the biggest expenses of a meal – and therefore the largest culprit for discrepancies in what each person owes – booze, too, is an area where those who are not on as tight a budget (or diet) should take the lead in order to make it less awkward for those who may have abstained.

“If I know when I’m dining out with someone who doesn’t drink, I go to the bar and settle the bill, so the folks I’m with aren’t paying for my martini. If you’re being a considerate diner that’s a good thing to do,” Potter says. If half of the group drinks wine and the other half does not, an alternative solution is to split the total for the food evenly, but have the wine-drinkers leave the tip.

Now, an obvious alternative to all of the above is to stay in if you’re on a tight budget, rather than going out, ordering very little and then making a fuss when you don’t want to pay what everyone else pays. And indeed, cooking at home or opening a bottle of wine with friends at home before heading out, can be good ways to cut down on the expense of eating out.

However, for most twenty-somethings, hosting a dinner party for 8 people isn’t an option. Studies show that Millennials dine out more than non-Millennials, and while spending can vary wildly depending on personal preference and location – informal surveys and anecdotal evidence show dining-out spending can range from less than $100 per month to upwards of $1,000 per month – cutting back on that spending is not something most are interested in.

Adds Weliver, “it’s by far the biggest discretionary expense in your twenties. I’m sure some people give the advice, stop going out. But there are a lot of barriers to that. I’d never advocate give up your social life to save money,” he says. “You’re not going to do it; you’d be miserable.” What you can do, Weliver says – and this happens to be the personal policy of this reporter – is to forego ordering on Seamless or grabbing takeout after work, and use the money you save from not going out by yourself on socializing with friends on weekends. And if you save enough money, you might not even mind splitting a group bill straight down the middle.

“My mother always had great advice – when you’re with a big group, order last,” says OpenTable’s Potter. “If you’re going to pay for everyone else’s dinner, make sure you get a good meal.”